Skip to main content

Gustave Courbet, 'Still Life with Apples and a Pomegranate', 1871-2

About the work

Overview

In a warm and dark room, Courbet’s rich, ripe apples seem to glow as if in firelight. The heavy earthenware bowl lined with pale blue slip seems almost too small for the weight of the fruit piled into it. Among them is a single pomegranate, squeezed in at the base of the heap.

In 1871 Courbet was jailed for his involvement in the Paris Commune, the radical government that ruled Paris for a few months that year. Allowed to paint but forbidden to have models pose for him, his sister Zoé brought him flowers and fruit, and he was able to explore still-life painting, a genre almost new to him.

Courbet knew the still-life paintings of seventeenth-century Dutch artists in which rotting fruit and dying flowers were symbols of the fleeting nature of life. But Courbet’s apples are things of beauty, rather than a warning of death. They are his affirmation of life – each one singular, sweet-smelling and tactile.

Key facts

Details

Full title
Still Life with Apples and a Pomegranate
Artist dates
1819 - 1877
Date made
1871-2
Medium and support
oil on canvas
Dimensions
44.5 × 61 cm
Inscription summary
Signed; Dated
Acquisition credit
Bought, 1951
Inventory number
NG5983
Location
Room 25
Collection
Main Collection
Frame
19th-century French Frame

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images